A month ago Digibarn co-founders Allan Lundell and Bruce Damer presented items from their portable computing collection on CNET Live. Watch this fascinating tour in the history of mobility:

We’re very proud to say that MuMoH has these same items in our own physical collection, and we look forward to sharing more details about them with you in the coming days. Please visit the Digibarn Blog when you have a chance, too.

The Palm portable keyboard is a solution designed for Palm Pilot. Simply unfold the keyboard, much like an accordion, and plug it into your Palm for smooth typing on a full-sized keyboard only missing the numerical pad on the right (which is found on most PCs). Closed, it’s 3.6x 5.1x 0.79 inches and opened up it’s 13.8x 5.1x 0.3 inches. It weighs only 7.9 ounces and its US list price is $99.

The Palm portable keyboard (manufactured by Think Outside) arrives with a fully padded zippered case and comes with a built in docking station that requires no batteries or power supply since it draws minimal power from your Palm. A recessed connector for the Palm folds neatly underneath the keyboard.
A key setback for the keyboard is that it absolutely requires a flat surface to use. It is virtually impossible to use in your lap. Also, the keys are a bit more cramped in the portable keyboard as opposed to the average PC.
The keyboard comes with an application that acts as a driver and makes the keyboard work exactly the way the user wants. When the Palm is plugged in, the user can immediately begin typing. When the user removes it and plugs something else in, the keyboard driver doesn’t interfere.

The Palm portable keyboard is designed for people who use their Palm like they use a laptop. Paired with the fact that users are pretty much assured that it will continue to be useful for several future generations of Palm handhelds, stands to make the Palm portable keyboard a great purchase.

The MuMoH physical collection includes a functioning keyboard, serial no. P10713U.

References:
http://www.pdacortex.com/palm_portable_keyboard_review.htm
http://www.palminfocenter.com/news/2009/review-palm-portable-keyboard-for-m500-series/
http://www.dansdata.com/portkey.htm

The Pilot 5000 was the second model of the first generation of PDA’s manufactured by Palm Computing (then known as US Robotics). Debuting in March 1996, the Pilot emerged in a market with only one major competitor: the Apple Newton, another organizer you’ll find in the Museum of Mobility.

The Pilot’s small size (shirt-pocket ready), was definitely an advantage over Apple Newton, which operated very similarly and had almost the exact same screen as the 5000 model.

The Pilot functioned with similar computing power to a Macintosh SE, boasing 512KB of RAM, nearly five times as much data capability as the original Pilot 1000 model. Later Palm Computing sold a 1 MB upgrade card to increase the memory capacity even further.

This was also the first PDA handheld to distinguish itself with the ability to synchronize with Windows 95, 3.1 or Macintosh desktop PCs.

Its Palm OS 1 operating system enabled low-cost, low-power integration with desktops through. While this device had no infrared port, backlight or flash memory, the Pilot’s software could synchronize its information with most standard PCs, allowing users to work with and share information from other application programs on their computer through their handheld.

Synchronizing a Pilot 5000 PDA with a PC allowed users to enter text from their full-sized keyboards and view the Pilot applications in wide screen on their monitors. The syncing software could also support several users on one PC, so one person could handle scheduling and updating for others, making the Pilot a great small business tool.

To input information, consumers used a stylus or popular Graffiti Text Entry Software created by Palm, which allowed the entry of 30 words per minute at 100 percent accuracy. Most information could be accessed with a single touch, as applications had near-instant response times.

The Pilot came in a plastic case of various colors, had an LCD tactile panel and 160 x 160 mm graphic display and operated with two AAA batteries, running simple-to-use applications in black and white. Pre-loaded with telephone directory, to-do list, memo, calculator and multi-app search functions, the Pilot was also compatible with many other popular applications, such as Ascend, DataSync, Lotus Organizer and Microsoft Schedule +.

The MuMoH physical collection includes the Palm Pilot and original leather case.

References:
http://www.obsoletecomputermuseum.org/usrpilot5000/
http://cdecas.free.fr/computers/pocket/pilot.php
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palm_(PDA)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pilot_1000
http://www.palminfocenter.com/news/8493/pilot-1000-retrospective

The Palm is a personal digital assistant (PDA) which runs on the Palm Operating System (OS) as well as Windows Mobile platform. The Pilot is the first generation of PDAs manufactured by Palm. The original Palm Pilot was announced in January and released in late March, 1996. The first Palms, the Pilot 1000 and Pilot 5000, had no infrared port, backlight, or flash memory, but did have a serial communications port. Their RAM size was 128kB and 512kB and they used version 1 of the Palm OS.

The inventors of the Pilot were Jeff Hawkins, Donna Dubinsky and Ed Colligan, who also founded Palm Computing. The original idea behind Palm Computing was to create handwriting recognition programs, but after further research, the trio landed the idea to create better hardware that would eventually lead to the Palm. Rumor has it that Hawkins carried a block the wood, the size of the future pilot, in his pocket for a week in order to test and gauge the feel of the device

Numerous applications were developed for the later Palm Pilots. AstroPilot, for example, was a commercial package that contains a large electronic reference book containing detailed information about the 1,000 brightest stars, 12 pre-made star charts and 175 web links to astronomy related web pages.

The Palm is noted for doing significantly better than its competitor predecessors and was hailed for its ability to store personal information like addresses and phone numbers, take notes, and track appointments. The Palm devices are now smartphones which run the Palm OS as well as the Windows Mobile platform. Popular models today include the Treo and Centro.

The MuMoH physical collection includes an early version of the Palm Pilot.

References:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palm_(PDA)
http://www.portents.com/marek/pilot/
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/11945300/

The BlackBerry RIM 957, one the original BlackBerry devices, was a compact mobile e-mailing solution and personal organizer created and manufactured in 2002. The PDA and ‘mobile office’ solution offered wireless email, corporate data access, an organizer, calendar, calculator, paging and wireless internet services.

The embedded RIM wireless modem and 32-bit processor gave the device the ability to integrate seamlessly with existing enterprise email accounts or up to 10 personal and business email accounts, supported by 8 MB of flash memory capacity, plus an addition al 1 MB of RAM. With the RIM 957, a user could receive email forwarded from any email address and reply through the same email for quick mobile communication anywhere in the country.

The device operated in conjunction with a base system, which when turned on redirected email to the handheld, wherever it might have been. The handheld would then chime, vibrate or give the user an on-screen or LED indicator that a new message had arrived.

Weighing in at 4.8 ounces, the device utilized a backlight, QWERTY keyboard and tracking wheel, to improve the user experience, simplifying the sending and receiving of emails, perusal of documents and selection of text on the device. Users could select at 16 or 20 line display on the large, high-resolution display screen, making it possible to read emails quickly and process longer emails more efficiently.

At 4.6 in height, the device looks like a thin stack of cards. It is 3.1 inches wide and almost one inch thick, making it’s compact design an easy fit for purses, pockets or briefcases of on-the-go executives, and with an internal, rechargeable lithium battery that could support up to one week of data or email usage per charge, the RIM 957 was a powerful organizing tool.

A main disadvantage of the RIM 957 was its inability to send attachments, a functionality that most mobile computers find absolutely necessary for out-of-the-office work. It also couldn’t run third-party programs, another distinct disadvantage to its Palm counterparts. This device also synced to a PC, to synchronize scheduling and emails in a flash.

The MuMoH physical collection includes a BlackBerry RIM 957.

References:
http://searchwinit.techtarget.com/handhelds/blackberry957/0,294190,sid1,00.html
http://www.geek.com/review-rim-blackberry-957/
http://na.blackberry.com/eng/devices/archived/857957.jsp#tab_tab_957specs

The Apple Newton is one of the first lines of personal digital assistants (PDA) developed and marketed by Apple from 1993 to 1998. Designed as an all-in-one business tool, the original Newton was based on the ARM 610 RISC processor, which has many power saving features and became the dominant processor in the mobile electronics market, where saving battery is an important consideration in design.

The original intent of the Newton project was not to produce a PDA, but to reinvent personal computing. The term “personal digital assistant” was coined by former Apple CEO John Sculley in the late stages of the Apple Newton’s development.

Apple’s official name for the device was “MessagePad,” but Newton was the name of the device’s operating system, and quickly became the popular term for the device and its software. Apple also embraced the name as it is an allusion to Isaac Newton’s apple and fit nicely into their branding efforts.

The Newton allowed users to type in notes, capture calendar data, create an address book and included handwriting recognition software. Users could also check the time in several time zones, calculate and check messages.

The Newton failed to make a big splash in the marketplace during its five-year lifespan. Its high price, large size and short battery lifetime contributed to its discontinuation in 1998.

A special accessory to the Apple Newton was the fax modem specifically designed to meet the needs of the Newton. It used a short serial cable powered by two AA batteries.

The Newton is still used to this day by Disneyland cast members as a survey taking device, was satirized in the popular TV cartoon The Simpsons.

The MuMoH physical collection includes an early Apple Newton, serial number unknown.

References:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Newton
http://www.everymac.com/systems/apple/messagepad/stats/newton_mp_omp.html
http://www.aviators.com/newton/